sports betting wagering innovator launches new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most effective innovation groups is starting once again with a new company - and has secured the most significant initial investment of any British start-up business.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports betting wagering site FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The brand-new company has seed financing of $21m.
It intends to release a new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the first half of next year.
The company is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.
FanDuel was offered to Flutter - formerly named Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
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However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal dispute with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the .
Mr Eccles said that a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to choose investors thoroughly.
He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we choose as investors in this brand-new company, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, and that they're the ideal partners for us."
The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation firms, consisting of two large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting market charges high rates for bad products and limits trades by its most successful users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively contend against incumbents with a significantly exceptional item and low fees, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles said it could look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.
'Pool of skill'
However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will be able to innovate and develop a broader variety of sports betting items.
He said the normal share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX needs to allow for that to fall below 1%.
The business will develop its own wagering apps to run on the platform.
Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to protect those who have problem with problem sports betting.
He stated the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped develop FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to build a firm. BetDEX has the very same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely experienced, extremely skilled engineering group, that constructed this item that might process millions of bets and millions of users.
"There's a real skill pool of skilled engineers who helped us build our item and that's what we wish to leverage for BetDEX too."
Related subjects
Edinburgh
sports betting wagering
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches Brand new Start up
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